Hot Town, Summit in the City

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump made a stunning concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday about halting military exercises, pulling a surprise at a summit that baffled allies, military officials and lawmakers from his own Republican Party.

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Should we start a pool & bet on when Rexit happens?

DEREK CHOLLET at SHADOW GOVERNMENT asks:

Why Has Rex Tillerson Belly-Flopped as Secretary of State?

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It’s Burnt and Made With Devilled Ham

From The Guardian:

It was easy wandering round the corridors of Congress yesterday to spot who had won the debt standoff. In huddles with party colleagues or heading off to caucus meetings to discuss the details of the deal or standing in front of TV cameras, it was the Republicans who had all the smiles.

Democratic members of Congress looked uneasy, at times shifty; and some downright were angry. “If I were a Republican, this is a night to party,” Emanuel Cleaver, a Democratic member of the House from Missouri, told MSNBC. Cleaver, a Methodist pastor and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, which met to discuss its reaction to the deal, dismissed it as a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich”.

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An Earmark By Any Other Name Would Smell as Expensive

From THINK PROGRESS:

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) likes to tout his opposition to earmarks. Indeed, since first entering Congress in 1991, the congressman has never requested a single earmark. And one of his caucus’s first moves in the new Congress has been to renew a voluntary earmark ban in the House of Representatives, making good on a major campaign promise. Yet as CAP [Center for American Progress] Senior Fellow Scott Lilly reveals in a new analysis, “No, He Wouldn’t—Would He?,” Boehner and House Republicans appear to have included an earmark-in-all-but-name for the new Speaker’s district in the newly released House Appropriations Continuing Resolution (CR).

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This Graham Cracker is Stale

Washington (CNN) – Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, son of famed presidential religious adviser Billy Graham, said Thursday that he believes President Barack Obama is a Christian, but that the president was born a Muslim because of his father’s religious beliefs.

Asked by CNN Chief National Correspondent John King if he had any doubts about Obama’s Christian faith, Graham, who has made controversial comments about Islam in the past, said the president’s background is fueling the false perception that he is a Muslim.

“I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,” Graham said on CNN’s “John King, USA.”

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Holier-Than-Thou Land

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

As president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Dr. Richard Land is an influential opponent of the Cordoba House project in New York. But when he’s not speaking on behalf of one of the most powerful religious bodies in the country, Land has a second — some would say ironic — ecumenical role: member of the federally created United States Commission on International Religious Freedom [appointed by George W. Bush].

In his role as a commissioner, Land’s job is to press for a U.S. foreign policy that advances religious freedoms around the world. Reached by phone today, Land maintained that there is no contradiction between his service on the Commission and his efforts to see the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center project moved farther north in Manhattan.

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General Discontent

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, who had sponsored Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan, expressed profound disappointment in his judgment Thursday — tempered with thanks for his years in combat — after he was fired from the post. The dismissal followed publication of a profile of the four-star general in Rolling Stone that quoted him and his aides disparaging other officials.

“Honestly, when I first read it, I was nearly sick,” said Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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